Tony Ray Amati killed three people in Las Vegas for fun

A member of the 1998 FBI’s top ten most wanted list.

Dani Erinn
5 min readSep 13, 2022

Anthony “Tony” Ray Amati was born on June 28th, 1976 in Carbondale, Illinois. His family uprooted and moved to Las Vegas in 1992, unaware of the type of horrific acts their son would commit there.

Tony graduated from Clark High School as an honors student in 1994 but worked as a telemarketer while attending. He was known for his intelligence and charm but reportedly suffered from OCD (obsessive-compulsive disorder) per a doctor during his murder trial.

Tony Amati- 10 ten figative list. Image from Wikipedia.

The tragic and completely unnecessary deaths

Tony went with two accomplices on a crime spree starting in May of 1996. The two accomplices were Troy Sampson(27) and Edward James(23). They first robbed a gun store of $30,000 in Las Vegas and stole 75 firearms.

First murder: On May 27th, 1996, the three men shot over 20 rounds into Michael Matta(27) and killed him. Michael was walking around a parking lot looking through bags of trash when he was shot. Matta was also homeless at the time of his murder.

Second murder: The three men waited until July to strike again. Just two blocks from their first kill, they shot and killed John Garcia (48) near his garage on…

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Dani Erinn

I love writing true crime and fascinating stories about humans.